The Russians

In 1977, Nathan travelled to the USSR under the auspices of the USIA. In addition to exhibiting his work, he made portraits of a cross section of the people of Novosibirsk with a view camera and a Polaroid back. These Polaroid photographs also had negatives which were carried out of the Soviet Union through a diplomatic pouch and became a book, The Russians, published in five countries.

Incredible, breathtaking views of locations that few of us will ever see.– Fred McDurrah, Photo District News

Romania 1969

The naive desire to explore what my life might have been like if my grandfather had not left Romania led me to travel there in 1969.

Nathan Farb captures the multiple essences of The Adirondacks as luminously as the best of nineteenth century landscape painters.

– Tom Hoving

:: Bio

Searching for both his past and future, Nathan Farb bought his first camera and started shooting on the streets of NYC’s Lower East Side in 1966. This work was presented as “The Other Summer of Love,” in “Lens”, the NY Times’ photography blog this past August.

In 1971 his political multimedia work “Lockport” was shown at The Public Theater to critical acclaim and a cult following.Farb was then asked to create a photography/multimedia program in the experimental Art and Music Department at Livingston College,Rutgers University where he taught until 1979.

In 1977 The United States Information Agency sent Farb on a cultural exchange to the USSR.In Novosibirsk,Siberia he used a 4’’x 5” view camera with a Polaroid back and brought out of the Soviet Union a revealing set of portraits of that society. Magazines throughout Europe published these images and a book of 100 portraits was published in Germany, France, Italy, Holland and the United States. The NY Times magazine published 12 of those portraits and a 50” x 70” print of “The Party Chiefs” from that series was acquired by MoMa and hung at the museum for many years.

In 1981 Farb returned to his childhood home in the Adirondack mountains to recharge himself by spending a lot of time in the woods. Over the next 20 years he produced 3 books published by Rizzoli cataloguing many of his finest 8”x10” negatives. That work has been excerpted by close to 100 magazines including The NY Times magazine. That publication then sent him to document the Exxon oil spill and the Yellowstone Fires and to the Galapagos Islands twice.

Nathan Farb has been given honorary Doctor of Arts degrees by St Lawrence University and The State University of New York. He is currently working on multimedia pieces about the transcendental connection between the natural world and our spiritual existence.

:: Selected Exhibition

MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian, The International Center of Photography, New York Public Library, The Public Theater, The Museum of the State of New York Rockefeller Collection, The Corcoran Gallery, Le Bibliotheque National (Paris),Lake Placid Center for the Arts and many corporate, university and private collections including those of Mario and Matilda Cuomo, and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan. Nathan’s work has been exhibited at many European Museums and featured on network TV.

:: Publications

The Russians published in Germany (Dumont Buchverlag), France, Holland, Italy and the United States

The Adirondacks (all the following published by Rizzoli, USA)

100 Views of the Adirondacks

Adirondack Wilderness

The Galapagos Islands

It is totally fabulous when you do something you love doing, and people love it and benefit from it also. I think that is the core, and if you are lucky enough to find a spot in the ethos where those things line up even once in your life, you should get down and kiss the ground.